Catherine McKenzie - Hidden

“Are you all right?” I’d asked.

She looked up, embarrassed, hastily wiping her tears away. She was wearing a cocktail dress in a pretty color (green?), and her long hair was loose and black against the moonlight. She obviously belonged to our party, but we hadn’t been introduced.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Why are you apologizing? I’m the one intruding on your privacy.”

“This place isn’t very private.”

“I’m not the one who made you cry, right?”

“No, of course not.”

“So, then, no apology necessary.”

“Thanks.” She stood up and wiped the dirt off her backside. “I’m Patricia. But people call me Tish.”

“Claire. Wife or participant?”

“Oh…participant, I guess. My husband’s inside.”

“Mine too.”

“What about you?”

“I’m a wife. At least, on this occasion.”

She nodded. “I know exactly what you mean.”

I pulled a cigarette from my skirt pocket. “Do you mind?”

“Of course not. I wish I could join you.”

“You can if you like.”

“I don’t really smoke. And my husband wouldn’t like it.”

I held a flame to the end of my cigarette. “Why do you think I’m skulking out here?”

She smiled, and she was quite lovely, in an understated way.

We stood there in silence for a bit before Tish said, “This is going to sound strange, but…do you ever wish you could do your life over again?”

“Everyone wishes that sometimes.”

“I mean really actually do it, start again. See if you can get it right the second time around.” She shook herself. “I’m sorry. You don’t need to hear the inside of my brain. I’m having a weird night.”

“Stop apologizing. I’ve had my share of weird nights. And yes, I think about that sometimes, but I don’t think it’s helpful.”

“No, of course.”

“I mean, I don’t think you have to do your life over to change it. I think it’s wrong to think you can’t change things in your life now because of decisions you’ve made in the past. Most things aren’t permanent—except children, of course.” I smiled, thinking of Seth, missing him.

“I wouldn’t give up my daughter for anything,” she said fiercely.

“You see. Your decisions can’t have been all wrong.”

“You’re right.”

“Don’t be so sure. It might be the cocktails talking.”

“No, thank you, this has been helpful.” She tugged at the bottom of her dress, straightening it. “I don’t have mascara all over my face or anything, do I?”

“You’re fine.”

“I guess that stuff really is waterproof.”

“Good to know.”

“Thank you…Claire. I should be getting back.”

“Of course.”

She smiled again, wanly this time, then walked up the torch-lit path.

“You were outside crying, right?” I say, then instantly regret it. “I’m sorry—”

“No, that’s all right. I was crying. And you were…great. I was in a bad place and…I don’t know if you remember what you said that night, but it helped.”

“I remember, and I’m glad, but I can’t take any credit. It was probably something I’d heard on a talk show.”

“I doubt it.”

“So…did you do it?” I ask.

“Do what?”

“Change the thing you were regretting…Wow, that was way too personal a question, you don’t have to say.”

“No, it’s fine.” She bites her lip. “The answer’s yes. In a way, I did.” Her face becomes incredibly sad.

I look over her shoulder, trying to give her some privacy.

A police car rounds the corner onto our street, driving cautiously. It stops in front of the driveway. A man I know is at the wheel.

“Anyway, I should be…go inside, I guess,” Tish says, but I’m only catching every other word. My heart’s beating so loudly it’s drowning everything else out.

“Thank you for coming,” I say, my eyes fixed on the vehicle.

“It was important to me to do it.”

The driver kills the engine and it’s déjà vu all over again, as Jeff would say. But it can’t be more bad news, it can’t be. Everyone I know, everyone I love, is in the house behind me.

The officer opens the door and gets out. My eyes track to the one thing that’s different from last time. The plastic bag he’s holding in his hand.

This time my body doesn’t fail me when I realize what it must contain, and because I can’t get away fast enough, I turn on a dime and sprint to the house.

My conversation with Claire leaves me feeling short of breath. I tell myself it’s the cigarettes, but they have nothing to do with it.

Claire.

I feel like I’d recognize her anywhere.

Which is silly, and not what history relates, because when Jeff sent me a picture of her and Seth, early on, when we were trading pictures of our offices, our streets, little snippets of our lives, I didn’t recognize her. Not at first.

But I couldn’t shake her face from my brain. Something about it was haunting me, until it finally came to me one night when thoughts tumbled through my brain like clothes being dried.

We’d met. In fact—and, of course, because when else could it be?—we met at the same time I first met Jeff.

I remember how excited Brian was when I told him we’d been invited to the retreat.

“Mexico! Wow. You’re moving up in the world,” he’d said, ruffling my hair and looking proud.

I smiled back though felt a flutter of unease. Truth be told, my original instinct was to refuse the invite, but the shocked look of a coworker, a look I knew Brian would repeat, quickly put an end to that fantasy. At least there was a sweet-looking golf course in the brochure. It had been a while since I’d made it out for a real round.

And there was the potential of Brian’s excitement. He’d been giving me “helpful” nudges for a while. Were there any openings above me? Could I move from HR to another area of management? Wasn’t the merger a great thing? A whole new world of opportunities?

Brian’s a great doctor. He’s patient and interested and will deliver your baby at two in the morning in a snowstorm. But, despite the fact that he eschewed a big-city practice, he’s ambitious. For himself, for me. And while I got that about him, he never seemed to understand or believe it when I told him I wasn’t like that. That I was happy to coast. To drift and somersault like a dried-out leaf in the late fall, hoping to avoid the rake, the collecting pile, the compost heap.

And by this time, there was something else too. A growing feeling that I had to stop drifting along, although I didn’t know how to. That I’d been letting life act itself out on me when I should have been directing it. I’d wake up in the morning sometimes, disoriented, not sure where I was. When it would come back to me—Springfield, house, Brian—I couldn’t help wondering how it had happened. How I’d ended up in this place, with this man, this life. How?

But how do you say that, really, to your husband? How do you even say that to yourself?

We went to Mexico. And when I got back from the driving range full of indignation about the crudeness of that jerk, John Scott, Brian’s reaction had been to tell me to “calm down.”

“Think about your career,” he said, and, “It’s not that big a deal, is it?”

When he said these things, I couldn’t help but think about the man whose look said he wanted to pound that fat fucker into the ground whether it meant the end of his career or not.

And maybe it was because of him, knowing there was someone close by who I was pretty sure saw things the way I did, that made me tell Brian I didn’t care about my job. It wasn’t a career, and I’d already blown any chance at the careers I ever cared about because I didn’t care enough.

“Don’t you get it, Brian? It doesn’t matter to me. Any of it.”

“What are you saying? Are you only talking about work?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” Brian’s voice moved up an octave. “What don’t you know, Tish? What?”

“Don’t push me. You’re always pushing me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re always trying to get me to be something I’m not.”

He sat down on the edge of the bed. “Do I really do that? I don’t think I do that.”

He put his head in his hands, and he looked so defeated, I couldn’t continue the fight. Even though I knew there were things that should be said. Even though I knew I might never work up the courage to say them again.

I sat next to him and took his hand in mine. He looked at me and I could see there were tears in his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean…I was so mad at that guy.”

“I’m sorry too. I should’ve offered to beat him up, right?”

“Maybe. Maybe that would’ve been good.”

“I’m not really dressed for that.” He was in a suit, ready for dinner.

“No.”

“Or built for it either.”

“True.”

“Are you…are you unhappy? With our life? With me?”

“No, of course not. I love you.”

“And you know I love you, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Is this because we never had a second child?”

“No, it’s not that. I didn’t…I didn’t want that.”

Brian was never around, particularly when he started his practice, and I felt so overwhelmed in those first few years with Zoey, so sleep deprived and not like myself, that I couldn’t imagine having another child. Brian was an only child, like me, and had never expressed the desire to have a second. But that he thought I did want more than one was a shock. Had he thought that all this time and never said, never asked?